GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1050 MHz on this specific model. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 580		4956 points
Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 2086 (73%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 93 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 will be 43% quicker than the Radeon HD 6870 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57984 (43%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a little bit (approximately 2%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 992 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8256 (29%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.